We were hockey players once, and young

The subject of holiday tournaments reared its head on the USCHO board, and there were a few posts about the infamous BU-Cornell matchup at the Boston Arena back in December of 1966. Al or Jim, were you at that game? It was supposed to be one of the better and more entertaining games of the Harkness-Kelley era and ended in a 3-3 tie in double-overtime.

BU historian Sean Pickett wrote the following account of the game based on the boxscore:

The game was played before a packed house of 6,000 at the Boston Arena and was also televised on a local Boston channel. The game started badly for BU when Fred Bassi was called for a penalty just 44 seconds in, and then defenseman Brian Gilmour was sent off just six seconds later. Cornell took advantage of the resulting 5-on-3, scoring the first goal of the game at 2:10. Cornell defenseman Harry Orr scored the goal with assists going to Michael Doran and possibly David Ferguson (Cornell had three Fergusons on the team that season; Douglas, David and Robert).

However, the Terriers came back just over four minutes later when they scored on the powerplay at 6:34, after Cornell’s Albert McNaught was sent to the penalty box. BU forward Jim Quinn scored the tying goal with assists going to Fred Bassi and Brian Gilmour. BU then took the lead, 2-1, at 19:29 of the first period when the Terriers took advantage of their own 5-on-3 opportunity. Cornell’s Paul Althouse was whistled off at 18:15 and Harry Orr followed him to the penalty box at 19:01. On the resulting 5-on-3 Brian Gilmour scored to give BU its only lead of the game, with assists going to defenseman Peter McLachlan and Jim Quinn.

The Terriers’ lead was short-lived, as the Rig Red tied it up just 1:16 into the second period as winger Robert Ferguson scored. Cornell took a 3-2 lead on another powerplay goal just 59 seconds later. BU's Serge Boily was sent off for interference at 1:45, and 30 seconds later Cornell defenseman Walter Stanowski scored, with assists to center Doug Ferguson and Orr.

Cornell goalie Ken Dryden and the Big Red were able to withstand the Terriers' attack until Darrell Abbott’s unassisted, short-handed goal at 15:20 of the third period. After playing through two 10-minute sudden-death overtimes, Cornell coach Ned Harkness and BU coach Jack Kelley agreed to end the game in a tie, having the two teams share the tournament championship.

In goal both Cornell’s Ken Dryden (40 saves) and BU’s Wayne Ryan (42 saves) were outstanding.

Dryden: 12-14-6-5-3--40
Ryan: 9-17-9-5-2--42


The ECAC standings were pretty tight in 1966-67, with BU finishing in first place with a 19-0-1 record and Cornell taking second with an 18-1-1 mark. The Big Red blew through the first two rounds of the '67 ECAC playoffs, beating Brown 11-2 and BC 12-2 (what a darn shame for the Eagles) before knocking off BU 4-3 in the inaugural ECAC tourney held at Boston Garden. The two teams met again in the NCAA championship game in Syracuse, and the Sons of Harkness won their first Division I hockey crown with a 4-1 victory over the Terriers. I remember reading some comments from Jack Parker about the play of Ken Dryden, saying how he was just unreal that season against BU, as they just kept throwing shots his way and he just kept making the saves (sounds like stoning Boston teams became his specialty ). I was also wondering if that was the season Cornell sported 3 stripes on the sleeves of its jerseys?

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming on ESPN Classic...

Sad to say, Mark, I did not see the game, although I was in Boston that evening. The Arena was sold out, and it was just impossible to get in. That game was long-awaited and ticket demand was amazing. College hockey was never a hotter item in Boston than in the late 60s and early 70s. Interestingly, Cornell had played in the ECAC Holiday Festival Tournament in the Garden (against Northeastern and Michigan State) a week or two before the Arena tournament, so there was no shortage of holiday tournaments back then.

The two teams were ranked 1 and 1A in the national polls, and interest in the outcome was really high. That was the year of the infamous Notre Dame-Michigan State football tie, when Ara Parseghian went for the tie rather than the win at the end of the game (running down the clock and taking a chip-shot tying field goal rather than going for a possible winning TD), knowing that the ND mystique would result in ND being voted number one over MSU despite the tie. In one of the pre-game articles about the Cornell-BU game, the writer made the point that "this match-up of the two top teams would be different, because the game could NOT end in a tie." Little did he know.

It would likely have been Doug or Dave Ferguson (the Cornell first line with Mike Doran) assisting on the Harry Orr goal, because Bob played third line and would not have been out on the power play with Orr and Doran. Abbott somehow got the puck over Dryden's shoulder on that tying goal. It was a great rush on his part to get in on Dryden. He was one terrific defenseman, as was his partner on BU's top D pairing.

The format of that tournament was like the opening round of the current World Cup--you played each of the three other teams in the tournament and the team(s) with the best overall record "won." There had to have been a dozen eventual first team All-Americans in that game: Dryden, Doug Ferguson, Doran, Orr, Stanowski, Brian Cornell, Pete Tufford, and Bruce Pattison from Cornell, as well as a bunch from BU (Bassi, Wakabayashi, Abbott, and probably others I've forgotten).

Truly a memorable event. The Garden was jammed for the March rematch.

Mark and Al, thank you very much for the memories -- I wish there was a collection of all such memories of the greatest days of the team (hint, hint...).

Just think -- Anne and I will be recounting the titanic struggles of the '86 team about 20 years hence.

Here's the Ithaca Journal's report on the game (written by Jerry Langdon, dateline Boston, Mass.):

"Who is number one in eastern college hockey?

The question wasn't settled here Friday night as unbeaten Cornell and Boston University battled through two overtime periods to a 3-3 tie before a capacity crowd of 5,450 in the climax of a Boston Arena Christmas tournament.

Both teams were near exhaustion during the two extra 10-minute sessions. The teams, now 11-0-1, battled evenly throughout.

They probably won't meet again until the ECAC championships at Boston Garden.

The goalkeeping by Cornell's Ken Dryden and Boston's Wayne Ryan, who shared the most valuable player award, was superlative, with Dryden having 40 saves and Ryan 32.

Cornell shut out the East's top-scoring line of Bu's sophomores Maxwell Gray, Serge Boiley and Herb Wakabayashi in a sterling defensive effort.

Defensemen had two goals for both teams.

Cornell had two apparent first period goals disallowed, and hit the post several times, but BU held its own in all respects, particularly in the late going.

Cornell had a wide edge in territorial play in a penalty-marred first period, but the Terriers capitalized on their opportunities and thwarted the Red's power plays.

Harry Orr, on a pass from Mike Doran, scored at 2:13 with BU two men down to put Cornell ahead, 1-0.

The Red was a man down when Jim Quinn scored the equalizer at 6:35 on a feed from Fred Bassi. The Terriers went ahead, 2-1, at 19:29 with Cornell two men down, on Brian Gilmour's slapshot.

Cornell was two men up with [sic] 3:22 and one man up for 1:56, but managed just one goal. BU was twomen up for 0:28 and one man up for 1:19, but scored two goals.

Cornell's two disallowed goals were by Mike Doran, on a deflection of a Bruce Pattison slapshot, and by Pete Tufford but officials ruled that Cornellians near the cage had raised their sticks higher than the allowed limit.

Cornell exploded early in the second period with two quick goals on slapshots by Bob Ferguson at 1:14 and Skip Stanowski at 2:15. Ryan got a glove on both shots but they trickled into the net and Cornell went ahead, 3-2.

Ferguson hit from 20 feet; Stanowski from 35 feet.

Dryden's brilliant goal-tending kept Cornell ahead in the second period and well into the third as both teams, playing their third game in as many days, tired visibly in the late stages.

BU tied the score at 15:22, with the Terriers down one man, when defenseman Darrel Abbott drove in on a solo to beat Dryden and make it 3-3. Seconds earlier Bob ferguson and Stanowski had hit the pipe with 15-footers.

Cornell blitzed the Terrier goal in the last minute but couldn't score.

Cornell had the edge in the first three minutes of the first overtime with Ryan making a sensational save on Doran from in close, but BU outskated the Red the last seven minutes. Dryden had brilliant saves on Boiley and Bill Hinch late in the period.

In the second overtime both teams struggled to mount an attack but failed to threaten seriously.

The two head coaches, BU's Jack Kelley and Cornell's Ned Harkness, agreed to play the unprecedented second overtime period and agreed that that would be all.

"I thought we played excellently and that we should have won," Harkness said, in a silent Cornell dressing room. "You bet your life we still think we're No. 1, he added." [sic]

Harvard won the first game over Northeastern, 5-4, also in overtime."

Notes:
- Doug Ferguson got the assist on Harry Orr's goal
- The officials were Giles Threadgold and Bill Cleary (yes, THAT Bill Cleary)
- The Journal gave the saves as 12-14-6-5-3--40 for Dryden, and 9-7-9-5-2--32 for Ryan.

Oops, Mark, forgot to answer your question.

As best as I can remember, the "three-striped sleeves" uniforms predated Harkness's arrival in 1963. Seems to me when I first arrived in Ithaca in September 1961, "Cornell" was spelled out diagonally down the front of the sweater, a la "Rangers."

The BU tie was Dryden's only blemish against Boston-area college teams.

Arthur:

Thanks for supplying the game recap, and as usual from back in the good ol' days, the stats never seem to match.

Al:

I was watching a Hockey Hall of Fame video that featured a 6-7 minute segment on Ken Dryden, and for some reason, I thought they had a black & white picture on the screen that featured a Cornell jersey he was wearing with three stripes? Must've been an illusion.

Later in that video he described the night he and his brother Dave (Buffalo) played against each other in an NHL game. He said he father drove to the game, and he he didn't think it was such a big deal to him at the time, but now that he has children, he can understand the feeling his father must've had sitting up in the stands and watching his two sons on the ice. He actually tried to talk his dad out of going to the game, since Bunny Larocque was getting the start, but when Larocque went down with an injury, Ken entered the game and played the rest of the way for the Habs. It's funny when you hear him talk about making it in the NHL. Even with the success he had in his amateur career in Canada and at Cornell, he never dreamed he would be good enough to make it to the NHL, let alone become a star. From BU killer to Bruins killer, he had quite a run.

The other amusing thing in the segment was that Dryden's father decided to put down blacktop in the backyard of his Ontario home one day, so his sons could play endless hours of street hockey with a ball/puck. Therefore, he shared some similar training as BC's Joe Mullen, who grew up playing street hockey in New York City and went on to have a great college and NHL career. But at least Mullen came up short against those "other" guys in Red & White in the 1978 NCAA title game.

Arthur:

I don't know if it's possible, but would you be able to post the game accounts of the '67 ECAC championship game between Cornell and BU at Boston Garden, or the NCAA championship game the following week in Syracuse?

Thank you.

Mark, I have the Legends of Hockey DVD with the Dryden segment, which I suspect is what you're referring to. I believe the picture is of the freshman team in '65-'66, which was wearing an older (pre-Harkness, I'm pretty sure) Cornell uniform. The very next still on the segment shows Ken in what was then the varsity home red uniform (against Harvard, I believe) with the single wider white stripe on the sleeve. My memory could be wrong, and Ned might have used the older uniform style in his first year or two, but that still would be pre-Dryden.

Ken's comments about joining the Canadiens are priceless, and typical of him. I especially like where he describes "walking into a dressing room with players who existed only on a television screen" and in joining them you felt like "that's the real them and that's the fraudulent you."

My fading, but I think accurate, memory recalls the '66-'67 lines, except for a few games in the middle of the season, as follows:
First Line: D. Ferguson - M. Doran - D. Ferguson
Second Line: B.Ferguson - M. Death - B. Kinasewich
Third Line: (1st semester) P. Tufford - B. McGuinn - B. Cornell
(2nd semester) T. Coviello - P. Tufford - B. Cornell
I think McGuinn was ineligible second semester for some reason
Defense 1: H. Orr - S. Stanowski
Defense 2: B. Pattison - P. Althouse
5th Defenseman: M. Watkinson
Note: left and right wingers and left and right defenseman may be inverted in some cases.

I've got a program from the Brown game 1/14/67, which was 3 games after the BU tie and 2 after the Yale loss. I marked down the lines for that game, which were as above except the 3rd line was Tufford-McGuinn-Coviello (perhaps Cornell was hurt) and the 2nd defense was Pattison - Watkinson. The program, in recapping the prior game, an 8-0 win at Colgate, states "the old Ferguson-Doran line, together again for the first time in four games, was at its best." I remember that in the Yale game, the 3 Fergusons played together and Doran played with the second line. The three games prior to that were all in Boston, but based upon the referenced note from the 1/14/67 program, it might not have been the regular lines that Al and I remember that were used in the BU tie.

Speaking of faded memories...

I recall Doug Ferguson centering that first line with brother Dave on right wing and Doran on left. My enduring memory of Doug is his pulling that strange beanie-like helmet worn by Ned's teams down low on his forehead before taking important faceoffs. That and his first period hat trick in Cornell's first ever ECAC playoff victory: 9-0 over BC in 1966.

Cornell vs. Boston University
ECAC Championship
Boston Garden, Boston, MA
March 11, 1967

Cornell 0 1 3 - 4
BU 0 2 1 - 3

Period 1
-----------
SCORING
None
PENALTIES
4:34 Cor Orr; 11:48 BU Quinn; 12:16 BU Hinch; 13:05 Cor Doug Ferguson; 19:57 Cor Orr

Period 2
------------
SCORING
2:14 Cor-1 Dave Ferguson (Doug Ferguson, Doran); 6:28 BU-1 Quinn (Sobeski); 19:53 BU-2 Quinn (Gilmour)
PENALTIES
10:14 BU Quinn; 12:15 BU Cooke

Period 3
-----------
SCORING
3:50 Cor-2 Doug Ferguson (Dave Ferguson) ppg; 6:17 Cor-3 Tufford (Coviello); 11:52 Cor-4 Doran (Doug Ferguson) gwg; 14:44 BU-3 Gray (Wakabayashi, Gilmour) ppg
PENALTIES
0:45 Cor Doug Ferguson; 2:15 BU Hinch; 3:13 BU Riley; 13:07 Cor McGuinn

Saves
--------
Dryden, Cor 13 11 6 - 30
Ryan, BU 7 4 9 - 20

Power play: Cornell 1 x 5, BU 1 x 5

Officials: Bill Cleary, Walter Fitzgerald

Cornell vs. Boston University
NCAA Championship
Onondaga County War Memorial, Syracuse, NY
March 18, 1967

Cornell 2 1 1 - 4
BU 0 1 0 - 1

Period 1
-----------
SCORING
1:26 Cor-1 Kinasewich (Death, Stanowski); 18:55 Cor-2 Stanowski (Orr, Dave Ferguson) ppg gwg
PENALTIES
1:52 Cor Coviello; 11:06 Cor Pattison; 17:40 BU Parker

Period 2
------------
SCORING
12:41 Cor-3 Doug Ferguson (Dave Ferguson) ppg; 12:53 BU-1 Sobeski (Quinn, Bassi)
PENALTIES
2:01 Cor Kinasewich; 3:38 Cor Orr; 6:50 BU Sobeski; 12:12 BU Cooke; 14:38 Cor Althouse; 15:29 Cor Doran; 17:32 BU Bassi

Period 3
-----------
SCORING
10:22 Cor-4 McGuinn (Coviello, Stanowski)
PENALTIES
3:04 Cor Orr (major); 8:10 BU Bassi; 15:27 Cor Orr; 17:02 Cor Doug Ferguson (minor, major); 17:02 BU Riley; 17:02 BU Parker

Saves
--------
Dryden, Cor 9 15 17 - 41
Ryan, BU 12 15 5 - 32

Power play: Cornell 2 x 5, BU 0 x 7

Officials: Bill Cleary, Giles Threadgold

Thank you, Arthur!

Two observations:

1. Seems like BU and Bill Cleary came as a package deal that year.

2. Ironic the NCAA championship game-winner came during a Jack Parker penalty.

Arthur:

Thanks so much for taking the time to post the boxscores from those two BU-Cornell playoff games. Looks like BU had some opportunities, but, as per usual, Mr. Dryden was there to shut the door.

Do any Ithaca Journal accounts of either of these games exist?

Thanks again for your efforts.

Giles Theadgold...I thought that name was erased from my memory. A referee like no other. He made Bill Cleary look invisible. He and Harkness would get into it nearly every game. It was like another game was going on between the two of them. Who could bait the other.

Thanks to Arthur and Al for jogging our thoughts. Wonderful times!

Larry '72

Giles had seven goals and four assists for BC's 1949 champs.